#comic words

[allwoe]

[sankdaddy-blog]

A comic about words.

[flipsidered]

anon from sam raimi ask here, what can you tell me about burnout? i have burnout problems annoyingly often and judging by your productivity i get the feel you might have suggestions for how to stop it happening or at least manage it

sorry for the late response! This is something i USED to suffer from hideously back in the day when page updates came months apart at a time (seriously how did I even have a readerbase at that point); i still experience burnout like everyone else but the way i’ve gotten around it is to familiarise myself with the concept of “producing anything at all is worth the effort”. i will ABSOLUTELY admit, here and now, that some of my pages suffer horribly from “jess wasnt in the mood so this shit is awful and ugly and off model”-itis. if you’re willing to allow yourself room to make mistakes and upload art which isn’t necessarily at the top of your game you’ll find you’ve given yourself a lot more wiggle room to create and don’t feel quite as constrained by your own standards. like obviously you wanna create the best possible work you can but if it comes at the cost of your sanity and you run in circles not making anything as a result it’s not worth it :T

another thing that helps me get past artistic burnout is to watch and engage with shit that inspires me; the last four episodes of A:TLA and the first season of Breaking Bad are my favourite go-tos because they both hit all my buttons wrt writing, pacing, framing, direction and tone in different ways, but more than that talking to my cowriter about it all gets me pumped like you wouldn’t BELIEVE. if you can find someone who’s willing to talk out your project with you it can have a huge effect on your level of creative energy.

[flipsidered]

since youve given out advise on this before... how much do you need to know about a story before you can turn it into a webcomic? i feel very strongly that i have a story in me and want to have something to show for it... but i dont have an ending, or a middle really. mostly what i do with my characters is think them up and insert them into situations in my mind for me alone. its fun and all, but im so wishywashy with the story and characters i dont know how to start :(

i think this is something that varies a lot depending on the creator of the comic and how fluid you’re willing to be with the storyline/plot/characters involved. Maggot Boy initially started only because Eli and I loved the interaction between Davey and Chainey; we hadn’t planned out any further than chapter three, to my understanding. Even Lazaro and Noah weren’t a factor at the time. At this stage I’m not even sure where I was gonna go with it, but diving in headfirst helped me develop as the story went.This isn’t always the best way to handle things though; it means (for me, anyway) you can’t easily incorporate or mesh in worldbuilding around the pockets of action, which is something MB suffers from IMMENSELY (i love reading abt people theorising how sov even flourishes the way it does in the situation it’s in bc even after all these years i have very little grasp of the sandbox i’m playing in, part of that being apathy and part of it being failed and missed opportunities for fleshing it out)

you should definitely take any advice i give with a grain of salt, i don’t wanna lead you down a bad path, but i still believe starting and reworking bc you’re not happy with the result or want to include more factors is still better than not starting at all. :>

[flipsidered]

I saw your other answer and i thought to ask you, I wantto try making a webcomic and doing stuff like that but its just really emotionally exhausting for me to constantly try my best and put things out there and never get any attention? And i try to not care about notes or about the attention and i try tojjst do itfor me but me wants emotional gratification for the work i do so im at a loss for what to do????

please understand eli and i have been working on our comic for ten years and there were huge stretches where we received no attention. If you go back and look through the archives of mb you’ll see heaps of pages with no comments on them.

like i said, i understand this feeling, i’m reasonably sure everyone with a creative bone in their body does or has at some point, but all i can say is that you have to push through this shit if you want to create something or it’ll choke you down and you’ll never get anything worked on. you can’t blame a lack of response on the part of people you don’t know when you lose motivation to do your own work, the only person you’re hurting is you. :\

[flipsidered]

hey jess! umm u dont have to answer this if u dont want to but do you have any advice on how to start up a webcomic? im sure you get asked this a lot but how do you get people to read a comic thats just starting off?

cut for big!

please don’t go into webcomics with the intent of getting readers!! this is a sure path to frustration and burnout!! nobody starts off with a huge readerbase unless they already have an established follower base and EVEN THEN not everyone who follows you is gonna read your content. I had a few readers when I started maggot boy bc of my time in the invader zim fandom but it took me a REALLY LONG TIME and A LOT OF WORK to build up a solid readerbase. You really need to be motivated by the story you’re writing and the art you’re producing more than you are motivated by the response of people reading it when you start out.

like im not saying don’t be excited about people reading your work and I know it’s hard not to be discouraged when you create something and it feels like nobody’s listening, but that just makes it even more important to believe in what you’re doing and actually ENJOY it, focus on your own development and your characters. the more you care about what you’re writing the more your readers will care!

that said, wrt starting a webcomic, you’ll wanna make sure you have your story and your characters sorted before you start, but honestly? don’t spend too much time developing it. webcomics aren’t print comics, you’re not gonna lose out on anything by releasing a version then re-releasing or retconning or reworking stuff later in the game if you end up unsatisfied with it. what you WILL do though is, if you spend too much time working on the details before you start, burn out and get bored or overthink things and fail to launch. ive said this before but try to think of making your comic as a work in progress rather than a sequential story, try to watch your own development and see how you grow rather than bust it all out perfectly from day one. if you have any story twists, work them out well ahead of time, otherwise just barrel ahead and only look back when you feel comfortable to do so

and finally if you really want my advice on gaining a readerbase (again, don’t make this your focus, but for down the line if you’re struggling):

-post to a webcomic community such as Tapastic, Smackjeeves, The Duck, anywhere where you can get comment feedback or any sort of place where you can interact with other creators. If you have a personal site use that when you link people to it, but mirroring your work on webcomic communities keeps it from stagnating in the internet

- Project Wonderful is pretty great; it’ll allow you to advertise cheap on other sites and will allow people to advertise on yours as well. This service was made specifically with comic creators in mind by Ryan North, writer for Dinosaur Comics.

-if you update to tumblr or post about it on tumblr use tags like #comics, #webcomics, #art on tumblr etc. liberally, but also tag for relevant themes in your comic like #lgbtqia or #coffeeshop au or whatever. not many people are gonna be actively searching these tags, but seeing a relevant tag on a page that’s not necessarily related to the content can still pique peoples’ interest enough to go back and check out the rest

-actively engage with anyone who shows an interest in your story - if they’re a fellow creator try and support them the same way they’re supporting you

-draw fanart of popular shows and film that you’re interested in separately. idk I guess this seems cheap but it’s fun and simple and can introduce people to your work who otherwise wouldn’t be able to see it

-if you find that you’re updating comfortably and regularly you can consider submitting to a creators’ content ring like Hiveworks when they open for subs, which is really good exposure

-I cannot, cannot, cannot stress this enough: WORK HARD and ENJOY WHAT YOU’RE DOING. you can’t expect other people to connect to your content if you don’t!

[flipsidered]

can you give me some advice on how to make a character seem cool??

steeples fingers

first off im gonna need you to point out which of my characters you find Cool so that I can correct you

the problem with qualifiers like “cool” is that it’s a HIDEOUSLY subjective term, like. What do you think is cool? Think of the coolest person you know. If you’re like me, cool roughly translates to “emotionally honest and open people who show active concern for your wellbeing while respecting and showing interest in your feelings and opinions” which is to my understanding the EXACT opposite of the standard understanding of what makes someone cool. The coolest people I know are the kind of people who bolster their friends and share their ideas. The lamest people I know are the kind of people who fill their lives with cool things and collect quirks and experiences and offbeat connections like being interesting and well-liked is something you can force from the outside with stuff.

I dunno, if I were to give you any set advice on this front I’d say that the best way to give off a vibe from a character is to give them plenty of opportunity to shine on their own. It’s cheap and easy to have someone go “That’s ___, she’s the coolest girl in school” and it’ll set the reader up with the understanding that that’s how she operates in universe, that’s her position, but you have to actually believe this person is a cool, solid, interesting individual or all you’ll have is a vague sheen of likeability implied through another characters’ lens and that’s lazy and also not very rewarding.

Just try not to conflate ‘cool’ with ‘flippant, mean-spirited and arrogant’ because it’s a big stinky 90s movie stereotype and literally nobody feels that way and anyone who does is also Not Cool.

alternative answer: wraparound shades and a hot pink striped windbreaker

[flipsidered]

do you have any pet peeves in writing or in comics in general?

DO I EVER! Setting aside all the garbage sexist/racist/ableist tropes floating around that have already been debunked by people far better equipped to do so than myself, here’s some of my most major irritations when it comes to dialogue and characterisation (which are usually the thing i immediately zone in on when consuming new media) and FUN FACT i’ve been guilty of a lot of these myself, which is a big part of why i find it all so cringey.

-Writers who prioritise plot convenience and feels over character integrity-Writers who can’t get across emotional nuance through any means other than heavy handed inner monologue-Spoonfeeding character traits through dialogue (ie “That’s Greg. He’s the funny one.” as opposed to “Greg: /cracks a joke, everyone laughs”)-Actually spoonfeeding in general is garbage. Your readers aren’t stupid, treating them like they are just makes your dialogue clumsy and obvious! Please don’t underestimate your readers!-Writers who can’t grasp the concept of grey area wrt the Good - Evil scale so every character fits very boringly and stalely into the Cinnamon Roll/Problematic Fave subsets-Writers who can’t alter written vocal tone between characters so everyone sounds the same-TEXT. WALL. DIALOGUE. if 90% of what you’re writing can be condensed into an expressive facial tic for fucks sake go with that instead comics are not novels-Style over substance; i’ll take a poorly drawn masterpiece of interaction and dialogue over a gorgeous pile of tropey tripe any day